The NY Post‘s Anti-Bike Crusade Drags On

This should have been a straightforward news article about the City Council’s decision yesterday to step up regulations on pedicab drivers and the way they price their rides. Given the sheisty behavior of some drivers, which one councilman recently compared to the cowboys in the wild west, the writers would even be forgiven for allowing the slightest bit of celebratory tone to creep into their prose when reporting ont he decision.

But because this is the New York Post we’re talking about, the above editorial is a chance to pen the latest in a long line of anti-bicycle screeds. The city shouldn’t simply regulate two-wheeled cabs, which the writer calls “kamikaze karts” in his first sentence, but ban them altogether. Why? Because “the basic problem is the pedicab itself,” the opinion piece reads, without citing any actual statistics. “They are dangerous to pedestrians, to automobiles and to themselves. (Just like bicycles, but that’s a topic for another day.)”